Twitter is at it again.
Once again, the leftist social-media platform, which presents itself a neutral forum for speech despite the censorious social justice warriors who run it, is blocking content from Live Action, the pro-life group.
It’s at least the second time Twitter’s censors have blocked Live Action for& “offensive” tweets, despite Twitter chieftain Jack Dorsey’s claims that he runs a neutral platform.
No Telling the Truth
Twitter has said Live Action cannot advertise on the platform unless it stops posting anything about the more grisly aspects of abortion or Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion “provider,” as it bills itself.
Live Action’s Lila Rose explained what happened — somewhat amusingly, on Twitter itself:
Twitter banned @LiveAction & my account from all ads. When we asked why, @Twitter said we could resume ads, only if we deleted the following content from our Twitter AND website:
— Anything about abortion procedures
— Investigations of Planned Parenthood
— All ultrasound images
Twitter did much the same in 2017: “It’s outright Orwellian that @Twitter says we must delete tweets that, effectively, criticize @PPact or show ultrasounds to advertise,” she wrote.
In September, Rose published a piece in USA Today that called out Dorsey for Twitter’s censorship despite what he told members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee early that month. Dorsey said Twitter does not discriminate against conservative viewpoints.
“I can tell you from experience, Jack Dorsey’s statements are not the truth,” Rose wrote in USA Today.
Twitter’s reasoning for blocking Live Action’s message? In emails to us, the company has said that our content violated its sensitive advertising content policy, which prohibits “inflammatory or provocative content which is likely to evoke a strong negative reaction.”
Some examples of this supposedly offensive content include pictures of children developing in the womb and even simple ultrasound images of babies — like the ones that expectant parents hang on their refrigerator doors.
Twitter’s actions suggest it’s OK for Planned Parenthood to tweet that a woman has a right to an abortion, but when I tweet and try to promote that a baby has a right to life, Twitter considers that inflammatory.
Twitter’s actions suggest it’s fine for Planned Parenthood to tweet that taxpayers who don’t want to fund the nation’s largest abortion chain are “extremists,” but when I tweet that there are alternative options to Planned Parenthood, Twitter calls that an offensive violation of policy.
Yet Twitter was careful about the way it censored Live Action, she wrote. Rather than ban its tweets, “it has banned our ability to promote (advertise) our content beyond our own followers until we delete all of our tweets that it deems offensive. That includes tweets of our undercover investigations into the abortion industry, tweets calling for the end of taxpayer funding for Planned Parenthood, and any ultrasound images of preborn children.”
Rose rightly concluded that Twitter was acting like a publisher, which edits and controls content, rather than a public bulletin board that accepts almost all comers. The law protects such a neutral platform from lawsuits for defamation and other problems its users might cause.
But Twitter wants it both ways: Exercise editorial judgment while accepting no liability — all while claiming that it doesn’t pick winners and losers on hotly contested issues.
Twitter’s early leaders claimed that it was meant to be a neutral platform for all speech, and that’s the model it should return to.
Until then, Twitter’s behavior should cause concern for everyone, not just for those of us in the pro-life movement. When a platform with more than 300 million users chooses to take sides on issues — suppressing certain voices and promoting others — that can have a negative impact on our national conversations, our politics and even our laws.
We should all be wary when an entity that was supposedly created to democratize speech actually wants to control it.
Congresswoman Censored
As Breitbart observed in its report about Twitter censoring Live Action, even members of Congress are subject to the content controls of the platform’s social justice warriors.
Breitbart disclosed e-mails that showed Twitter blocked a pro-life video from Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) because she claimed to have “stopped the sale of body parts.”
Twitter’s censors thought such words could “evoke a strong negative reaction.”
